


Height Isn't Everything

by FriendshipCastle



Series: Volleydorks [9]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Bullying, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 05:25:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2535770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendshipCastle/pseuds/FriendshipCastle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tsukki and Freckles become besties because bullying.  Tsukki is a graceful giraffe forever and Freckles has a Berserker Button labeled ‘giraffe-looking assholes getting hurt.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	Height Isn't Everything

Tsukishima could credit the fact that he was so tall for everything great in his life. He’d had his first growth spurt in the second grade, suddenly towering a head above everyone else in the class, and then he just never stopped growing. He was taller than his older brother by the time he was twelve (albeit only by a couple centimeters). He was drifting through his first year junior high school like a baby giraffe, nearly 175 cm tall. It made ignoring his fellow classmates laughably easy. A pair of headphones and a distant expression aimed over everyone’s head was all it took, and no one tried to bother him.

There was one kid who kept bumping into him, though. Tsukishima stuck to a very solid schedule, so he saw that kid pretty often. At least twice a week, actually, on the way home from school. The kid never stopped _literally_ knocking into him, though. He had his head down and was usually jogging when he slammed into Tsukishima’s shoulder _every single fucking time_ he passed him, with a choked, “Sorry!” flung over his shoulder. 

Tsukishima wasn’t used to being ignored so thoroughly that someone would run into him. He was fucking _tall_ for fuck’s sake. He grumbled to himself and thought of several very harsh things he could say, but it wasn’t worth the effort. He only saw the guy for a few seconds at best. No reason to engage with him.

Then his second year of junior high started. He walked into his classroom and realized that the kid who kept bumping into him was there, yawning widely and then wincing and rubbing at his jaw. Tsukishima sat down by the windows, not quite the back corner but as close as he could be without the teacher labeling him a slacker. 

He _was_ a slacker, but there was no reason to signal that he was and set himself up for special attention.

After laying out all his pens and notebook neatly in front of him, Tsukishima started zoning out. It was time for the first-day-of-class speech. Yes, there would be homework, but it would be getting-to-know-you bullshit. He’d write a one-page essay on himself and then it would be done. Tedious, but standard.

Except apparently this was a _new_ kind of teacher. She smiled at all of them and then said, “I want you to pick a partner. Ah!” She raised a hand when everyone (except Tsukishima) immediately started reaching for their best friend in the class. “I want you to choose someone you don’t know. I can pair you up if you can’t pick partners yourselves, but I want you to choose a person you don’t know yet. No, you don’t have to sit by them all year,” she added with a chuckle that was met with stony silence from her students. She cleared her throat and said, “Well, go on!”

Tsukishima sighed and waited. Someone would have to be paired up with him. He certainly wasn’t going to go through the effort of selecting someone for whatever this new teacher had in mind.

“Hey, wanna be partners?”

Tsukishima blinked at the kid standing by his chair. It was the guy who kept bumping him, his cheeks tinged faintly pink under a dusting of freckles. He was gnawing on a lip that already looked raw, the sharp gleam of braces with green rubber bands digging into his skin.

“Sure?” Tsukishima said.

“Awesome!” The kid smiled and then winced and pressed a hand to his face again. “Uh, sorry, my braces were tightened yesterday.”

Tsukishima grunted.

The kid smiled carefully and said, “I’m Yamaguchi Tadashi.” And then he put his hand out.

Tsukishima ignored the handshake offer and said, “Tsukishima Kei.”

The hand retreated. “Uh. Oh. Were you held back?”

Yamaguchi took a step away and bumped into another person’s desk under the full force of Tsukishima's glare. “No! What makes you ask that?”

“Uh! You’re really tall! Sorry!”

Tsukishima relaxed slightly. “Yes. I’m tall for my age.”

“How tall?” Yamaguchi asked, stepping forward again.

“175 cm. Almost.”

“Wow!” Yamaguchi gasped. “That’s cool! I bet no one bothers you, huh?”

“They don’t,” Tsukishima agreed, feeling slightly smug about that fact. 

“I’m loving these conversations you’re having!” the teacher called over the room chatter. “I’m going to hand out a list of questions now and I’d like you to interview your partner! And you’re going to write a paper on them and read it to the class next week, all right? You can have the rest of the period to discuss.”

Tsukishima raised an eyebrow at the paper the teacher handed them. 

“Do you want to go first?” Yamaguchi asked. 

“We could just go through them together,” Tsukishima pointed out. He uncapped one of his pens.

“Can I, uh, sorry. Can I have a piece of paper and a pen?” Yamaguchi asked, blushing under his freckles. His hands were twisting nervously at the hem of his school jacket.

“Where’s all your school stuff?” Tsukishima asked, ripping out a leaf from his notebook.

“I, uh. I forgot it.”

“On the first day of school.”

Yamaguchi stared at the first question on the paper. “I guess. What’s your favorite color?”

Tsukishima rolled his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Who doesn’t know their favorite color?” Yamaguchi asked, clearly puzzled.

“I don’t.”

“Well then, pick one? I guess?”

“Blue.”

Yamaguchi wrote that down.

“What’s yours?” Tsukishima asked.

Yamaguchi pulled back the corner of his mouth and managed to say, “Green!” while pointing at his rubber bands.

Tsukishima wrote that down.

_Favorite animal?_

“I don’t know. Cat.”

“I like cats too! I had one named—”

_Favorite time of year?_

“I don’t— Autumn, I guess.”

“I like summertime. I get to stay up late because it stays light for so long, and my sisters and I—”

_Siblings?_

“Oh, two sisters, like I was saying! They’re twins. Their names are Aoi and Hinoe and they’re not really talking too well yet but they can move really fast! One time—”

“I have an older brother. Akiteru.”

“Really? How much older?”

“That’s not on the sheet.”

“Oh. Well, still, how old is he?”

“He’s almost eighteen.”

“That’s pretty old.”

“Yeah. But I’m still taller than him.”

“Oh my gosh, really? That’s so cool!”

And on and on and on. Tsukishima was slightly frustrated that this kid couldn’t stop chiming in with stories or extra questions. At least the conversation made the class time pass more quickly. They were only two thirds of the way through the question sheet when the bell for break rang.

“Don’t forget to write about your partner in an essay format!” the teacher said as students pulled out snacks and other notebooks, preparing for the next class. “You don’t have to include answers to all the questions but I would like to see a lot of them answered in there, okay?”

“Do you want to finish these up some other time?” Yamaguchi asked.

“We can just write this shit up as it is,” Tsukishima said. “She just said we didn’t need every answer to be in the essay.”

“Oh. Okay,” Yamaguchi said. He glanced back at his desk. Someone else was sitting there now, talking to her friend. His small, deflated bookbag had fallen off the back of the chair and was lying on the floor. He scooped it up, glanced around, then pointed at the vacant desk behind Tsukishima. “Sorry, is it okay if I sit here?”

“I don’t care,” Tsukishima said with a shrug.

“Okay, thanks!” Yamaguchi said with what Tsukishima considered inexplicable enthusiasm, and he plopped down. He started digging through his bag, which looked kind of grimy and empty for a first-day-of-school bookbag. He pulled out a crumpled plastic baggie after a moment, his face bright with triumph. “Awww yeah, carrots!”

Tsukishima realized his mouth was hanging open a little bit and he closed it with a click. He seemed to be the captive audience to this kid’s internal monologue made external. He leaned back against the wall and listened as Yamaguchi explained why carrots were the greatest root vegetable in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

Yamaguchi continued to be a confounding puzzle. He signed up for the junior high volleyball team right after Tsukishima, stuttering over his own name when the captain tried to make small talk. Then he wouldn’t stop talking about how excited he was that they’d get to play volleyball together. He didn’t raise his hand in class and was the last person to talk in any situation, yet he talked Tsukishima’s ear off during lunch periods. 

Tsukishima found himself packing more for lunch when, for the third day in a row, Yamaguchi didn’t have food or money to buy anything.

“Don’t your mothers pay attention to your eating habits?” he asked, passing a spare pair of hashi to Yamaguchi.

“Yeah,” Yamaguchi said. 

Tsukishima waited for the epic monologue he was sure would emerge, but that actually seemed to be it. 

“Do they pack you lunch?” he asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Well, do you have lunch money?”

“…sometimes.”

Tsukishima huffed and let it go. Yamaguchi’s hair was hiding his face and his shoulders were tense, raised almost to his ears with discomfort. He was clearly done talking about it.  
Then, as the autumn rains started in earnest, Yamaguchi started showing up soaking wet.

“Do you have an umbrella?” Tsukishima asked him as he wrung out his jacket over the bathroom sink. It had become standard for Yamaguchi to meet Tsukishima in the shoe changing room before school, though Tsukishima wasn’t sure how that happened, and then they would walk to class together. Now they had to make detours to the restroom so that Yamaguchi didn’t show up to class shivering like a drowned rat.

“I _did_ ,” Yamaguchi growled. Tsukishima paused at that. He hadn’t heard this kid sound angry yet. Excited, cheerful, or sleepy were his only speeds when he was around Tsukishima. Silent and watchful were for when he was around other people. Pissed off was not on the menu. 

Tsukishima wasn’t exactly sure what to do in such a situation. He watched Yamaguchi wring another cupful of water out of his jacket, shake it out (the wrinkles were intense), and then put it on over his drenched button-up. He squeezed out the hems of his pants but didn’t take the time to try and get anything else drier.

“We’re gonna be late,” he said.

Tsukishima followed him in silence, very uncomfortable with the realization that he was trailing after someone. He tried to think of it as two independent classmates who happened to be heading the same direction to their classroom, but he knew he was becoming attached to someone. He wasn’t precisely sure what to do about it, though. He tested out the word ‘friend’ in his mind for a moment before he had to physically shake his head to dislodge the thought. It was true but it sounded… strange. Tsukishima was not one to have friends. He scoffed at such notions. He was certainly not going to involve himself in something that pointless.

But Yamaguchi kept talking to him, waiting for him before school, sharing lunchtime with him. And he didn’t know how to tell him to fuck off, because if he was honest with himself, he didn’t _want_ to tell the kid to fuck off. He didn’t plug into his music at school anymore. Volleyball practice was less tedious because he didn’t have to wait to be partnered with someone; Yamaguchi was always there to pass with him (even though the kid was kind of a shitty player, and short enough that it was going to be an issue when they played in matches).

The only time they parted ways is after school. Yamaguchi left with a smile that was faint for him, waving goodbye before taking a route Tsukishima didn’t know about. By all rights they should leave school the same way, as they always ran into each other (Yamaguchi ran into Tsukishima, really) the year before on their respective ways home. But Yamaguchi always jogged off the same way and Tsukishima wasn’t sure what changed. Perhaps his family had moved? It was a weird thing to bring up, though, and Tsukishima didn’t.

Not until he lingered after volleyball practice one day, at least. Yamaguchi had stopped to talk to the coach after practice and Tsukishima decided suddenly that he’d wait for him. It was an impulse that made no sense. Even if he waited, they’d just say goodbye immediately and go on their different paths. He told himself it was a waste of his time, but then reasoned that he’d be wasting his time at home if he wasn’t wasting it by playing a waiting game, so it was no great loss. He turned up his music and lurked around the gym doors for a while. 

He was leaning against them, the blue of his school uniform fading into the blue painted doors, when he saw Yamaguchi rush around the corner of the gym. He was moving faster than Tsukishima had ever seen him run, but that wasn’t saying a lot. Yamaguchi was a pretty slow runner.

Clumsy, too. In a show of physical comedy that would have made Tsukishima roll his eyes if it had shown up in a movie (but this was _real life_ , it had no business happening _right in front of him_ ), Yamaguchi tripped over his own untied shoe-laces.

So he didn’t have time to tie his shoes, Tsukishima noted. Odd.

Then Yamaguchi was skidding, mostly on his side, and wheezing into the dirt. Tsukishima stared as the kid turned his head. There was a flash of braces and blood over freckles. Then Yamaguchi rolled over and scrambled backwards like a crab. He was focused back the way he’d come.

Tsukishima turned and followed his gaze. There were a couple heavily-muscled third-years rounding the corner at a jog even slower than the kid’s. They were laughing breathlessly, but there was an edge to their laughter. In the few seconds of silence between one song and the next, Tsukishima heard them. They didn’t sound like children at play. They sounded harsh and mocking, reckless. Dangerous. Tsukishima frowned and looked around for Yamaguchi. He had to look farther than he’d expected; Yamaguchi was already halfway down the block, his arms pumping like crazy and his short legs pounding the ground. The third-years followed him with some cheerful, mocking yelling that somehow cut through Tsukishima’s Franz Ferdinand album.

Tsukishima raised both his eyebrows. He felt like an idiot for not seeing it before. He walked home slowly, his eyes on the ground.

He was unlocking the front door of his house when he realized that any time he’d seen Yamaguchi running during his first year, before he’d known who he was, it probably meant he’d escaped those assholes for the day. And any time he didn’t see him… Well, who knew. It also explained every time he’d missed lunch, and how he’d lost all his school supplies on the first day, and a thousand other small things that added up to something that made Tsukishima feel faintly ill. He sat down and took off his shoes.

“Heyyyy Tsukki,” Akiteru said, slapping at his shoulder. “Good day at school?” He sat down next to his brother and started cramming his running sneakers on his feet.

“Can I ask you something?”

Akiteru looked over at him, pausing in his lace-up routine. His little brother was glaring at the ground, the glasses he still needed to grow into slipping down his nose. “Really? Uh, sure! I gotta go running though, and I have a load of homework I still have to finish before dinner, so if you—”

“Never mind,” Tsukishima said. “Forget it.”

Akiteru watched him stand and walk away. He frowned after him, then shrugged and kept carefully tightening his laces.

 

 

 

 

Tsukishima didn’t let on that he knew what had happened. He yawned at Yamaguchi’s scraped-up forehead the next morning and asked, “What happened to you?”

“I tripped,” Yamaguchi said, blushing.

“Watch where you’re going next time,” Yamaguchi said. There were some scabs that had been made while he watched, but there were also a few bruises that showed at Yamaguchi’s cuffs when his sleeves rode up during class.

He’d stopped changing in front of the rest of the volleyball team two months ago. It had been an odd shift, him going to the bathroom and coming out in his practice gear, leaving the team sweatshirt on throughout all of practice, but now Tsukishima could feel his own stomach going cold and heavy as yet another piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

There wasn’t any point in telling a teacher that a student was being bullied if he couldn’t point to the kid and his tormentors. It was a tattle-tale move that might not get any results. Tsukishima would solve this a bit more cleverly, he hoped.

He waited after practice today as well, leaning in the same place as before. He felt a dark swooping in his chest when Yamaguchi appeared at a run again. Yamaguchi’s knees were skinned up and the sleeve of his sweater was ripped. His schoolbag flapping behind him had distinct footprints printed on it in dirt. His eyes were wild and didn’t settle anywhere, skimming the schoolyard constantly.

“Hey!” Tsukishima said, taking the gym steps three at a time. Yamaguchi lurched to a halt and stared like a deer in the headlights as Tsukishima glared at him. “Tell me who those guys are.”

“Uh, what? Tsukishima, what are you doing here?”

“Who’re those guys?”

Yamaguchi shook his head. His breath was wet and ragged around his braces. “Uh, I gotta go.”

“No,” Tsukishima sighed. “You have to tell me what’s going on so I can tell an adult.”

The kid blinked at him then. “But they’ll kill me!”

“No,” Tsukishima said. “Well, I don’t know. But at least the adults will know who did it.”

Yamaguchi rubbed a hand down his face. “That’s not helpful, Tsukishima.”

“Ah,” Tsukishima said, stepping around him. “Here they are, I’ll ask them myself. Hey!”

There were three of them today, all of them red-faced and not laughing this time. They stopped running—they’d been moving at a sprint this time, not the menacing, relentless jog that they’d been doing yesterday—and fanned out. Tsukishima ran his gaze over all of them, then focused on the one who seemed to be in charge, dead center. 

“What’s going on here?” Tsukishima asked.

They were all glaring at him now, the freckled kid behind him all but forgotten. Tsukishima could feel that Yamaguchi had one hand gripping the back of Tsukishima’s jacket, and he was breathing with a little whining noise every now and then. Tsukishima could hear him whispering, “Oh shit,” to himself very quietly.

“You have a problem?” the leader asked.

“Obviously,” Tsukishima said, and then he found out what it felt like to get hit in the stomach. It was shocking more than anything else, because suddenly Tsukishima couldn’t breathe even though he was starving for air, and while he would never say that he started crying, his face was certainly leaking a lot.

Tsukishima was doubled-over and regretting all of his life choices when he heard, through the panicked roaring in his ears, incoherent yelling. He looked up, hands still clamped to his solar plexus, and found that Yamaguchi had stepped up in the leader’s face. He shoved him and the leader staggered back, more from shock than from the power of Yamaguchi’s push. The bully’s friends were laughing but once again there was a strange flavor to it. They were uncomfortable. They were backing away from Yamaguchi’s red-faced fury. 

Spit flew out of Yamaguchi mouth as he screamed, “You fucking _assholes_ , why the fuck would you hit him, he hasn't done _shit_ to you! Do you just hit whoever you feel like? That’s fucking _pointless_! That makes no sense! Get the fuck out of here!” He sucked in a deep breath and howled, “Right now!” when they didn’t move away fast enough. 

They walked off, still laughing together awkwardly. They looked back every now and then. Yamaguchi just stood there, hands in fists, until they went around the corner of the school and were out of sight. Then he whipped around and squatted so Tsukishima didn’t have to look up at him (Tsukishima had never looked up at a classmate in his life and now he knew that he _hated_ it), telling him, “Try to straighten up. It’ll help you breathe better.”

Tsukishima wanted to ask why he knew that, even though the answer had pretty clearly rounded the corner a few seconds ago. Instead he just wheezed some more.

“Jeez, Tsukishima, that was stupid.”

Tsukishima nodded. He tried standing up straight but groaned at the way it made new rips of pain in his stomach. Yamaguchi reached out and nudged him, though, and he took a shallow breath and rose to his full height.

“Ow,” he managed. It felt like he’d poured acid on his stomach.

“Thanks for, uh, helping me out, though” Yamaguchi said.

Tsukishima eyed him suspiciously. “It was stupid,” he repeated.

Yamaguchi turned red. “Well, yeah, but it was really, uhmmm… not cool, but—”

“Yes, thank you, I’ll be going now,” Tsukishima hissed. He tried to walk off with some dignity but he still had to hunch up or else his stomach muscles started screaming at him again.

“Wait, wait!” Yamaguchi called, and then he was walking next to Tsukishima, trying to look him in the eye. “I’m really thankful! I’m sorry!”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Yamaguchi’s braces glinted as he smiled. “Yes, you did! You stood up to those guys for me!”

“I tried,” Tsukishima said. “And they kicked my ass.”

“It was brave,” Yamaguchi said. 

Tsukishima had to roll his eyes or else he would have blushed. “I thought I was tall enough that they wouldn’t bother me. Clearly they didn’t care about height. How long have they been bullying you?”

“Oh, uh.” Yamaguchi looked away and straightened his bookbag’s strap. “A while.”

Tsukishima hummed. “You really should tell someone.”

Yamaguchi shrugged with one shoulder, still not meeting Tsukishima’s eyes. “I don’t want my moms to get involved. They’re really busy. And, uh. My mother get really pissed. Like, loud and pissed. And I like this school. There are good teachers and the, uh, the volleyball team is fun, and, uh. Well, I’m glad I have a friend like you, Tsukishima.”

“Tsukki.”

“What?”

“My brother. He calls me Tsukki. You can if you want.”

Tsukishima still wasn’t looking at Yamaguchi, but he could feel the megawatt grin that hit the side of his face. “Okay! ‘Tsukki’… I like it!”

Tsukishima grunted.

“Hey,” Yamaguchi said, tugging at his sleeve. “Wanna come over to my house and meet my family? Mother actually had a day off work today so she won’t be so grumpy, and Ma will want to meet you!”

Tsukishima glanced down at him. Yamaguchi still hadn’t let go of his sleeve, but for once Tsukishima didn’t mind the fact that someone was this close to him. He shrugged and said, “Yeah, I guess,” and then he had to turn away from the look of utter delight on Yamaguchi’s face.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> 175 cm is over 5’5", which is how tall I am, and therefore counts as Obscenely Tall in my book. Tsukki's at 6’1" in the show and Freckles thinks he’s gonna keep growing. That’s unfair.
> 
> Freckles with braces is hellaciously important to me okay. Fo realz, if anyone wants to do fanart of my shit, let it be awkward middle school photos. 
> 
> Freckles is actually a smooth fuckin’ operator in this. Getting chatty during class exercises? Way to go, dude. I didn’t expect this level of friend-seduction from him but it just made sense when I wrote it. A nervous talker when he’s one-on-one, can’t get him to say a word when you add more than two people to a situation. (I may be projecting.)
> 
> There’s that word hashi again, aww yiss. Getting some mileage out of that. 
> 
> WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT FUCKING ROOM CALLED WHERE THEY CHANGE THEIR SHOES. I think of it like a locker room but that has a different association in English (especially because these boys are doing the Sports), so I have to write ‘shoe changing room.’ There’s gotta be a better term. Google isn’t giving up those secrets easily. ED: Someone found it for me, oh my gosh THANK YOU. Getabako. Learning new things every day sustains me. (link: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getabako)
> 
> Tsukki calling Freckles ‘kid,’ like they aren’t the same age. Asshole.
> 
> Akiteru is secretly Fonzie.
> 
> The punchline of this story (pun intended) is that Tsukki is, in fact, not that clever. Handling bullies is educators’ responsibility and he should totes have told a teacher.


End file.
